The day and the time

This painting is “The Parable of the Ten Virgins,” a mural in the Mansfield Traquair church in Edinburgh, England. This Church is decorated with many murals inside the dome, and the paintings’ tone is soft pastel and coloured lightly. In this painting, ten virgins are in pretty dresses, each holding a lamp and a lantern. One of the bridesmaids has a short haircut, and she’s looking behind.

This is a Jewish wedding in the first century. The ten bridesmaids were waiting at home together for the bridegroom to come and bring them to the wedding feast with those who carried extra oil for the lamps, and another five women did not have oil lamps. But something happened to the groom, he was delayed in arrivng; in the meantime, the girls got tired of waiting and fell asleep. After a short, drowsy time, they were awakened by a sound outside: “Look! Here is the bridegroom.”– it was time to go!

All women hurried to get their lamps prepared. The five wise women could attend the wedding banquet, but the foolish five couldn’t because they needed their oil lamps. So, they asked the other women if they would share. But the bridesmaids, who had prepared the oil, rejected their requests. Instead of sharing their oil, the five wise bridesmaids encouraged others to search for the Servo that stocks lamp oil.

They quickly hurried back to the wedding banquet, but they were too late. The wedding banquet had already begun, and the door was shut in their faces, the bridegroom was angry at their failure and refused to acknowledge them. I thought the five women who didn’t share oil were also nasty, but the bridegroom who didn’t open the door of the wedding banquet seemed to be nastier.

Jesus shared this parable with his followers while they were gathered on the Mount of Olives. He had been talking much about the future, particularly the coming day. His disciples kept asking him, begging him: When will this happen? How will we know when you’re coming? And what signs will show that the end of the age is near? These questions might sound a bit odd to us, but if you were listening to Matthew’s gospel back then, they would be quite familiar.

No one knows the hour Jesus will come.

At least 50 years after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, the time that Jesus, the bridegroom, had said would come to them was passing. As Jesus’ return was delayed, they began to panic. Would Jesus not come? Could they have misheard him? Could our faith have been in vain?

Jesus’ parable would have been very practical for the early Christian followers in this situation. Through the story of the virgins waiting for the bridegroom, they learned what their attitude should be in the face of Jesus’ coming. The first answer is that no one knows the “day and hour”. The second is to “stay awake,” which means preparing oil, waiting, and alert for the time Christ Jesus will come again.

In my opinion, waiting must rank among one of our least favourite things to do. Waiting is not something we do particularly well, right? Last week, I had to wait 50 minutes to see my GP, and I told him I waited almost an hour; then, he told me that his patients had to wait all day because of an internet outage. Sometimes, waiting frustrates us. Well, the waiting that Matthew talks about is much harder than this impatient, foot-stomping waiting.

Brothers and sisters! What does the return of Jesus mean to us? One day, I was talking with my mum about the second coming of Jesus, and she said: I have never thought in my lifetime that Jesus would come again. I don’t even believe it. And I don’t think she is the only one who thinks like that. So, what is the faith of the Second Coming that the Gospels speak of repeatedly? How did Matthew’s community live out their faith for the coming of Jesus? We can find something in common in the Gospels and our reading today, 1 Thessalonians.

The Matthean community understood that the essence of their faith was not merely a question of ‘when.’ In other words, it wasn’t about anticipating the timing of events but about wholeheartedly living a life cultivated with gratitude, prayer for hope, peace, and justice. In other words, for them, it’s not that they didn’t have faith in the arrival of Christ in the future; instead, it was a present reality—here and now—as they actively lived in the presence of God.

Christ’s return, which is termed the Parousia in Greek, means it is not a one-time event like the end of an apocalypse, but rather God is always coming to us, and we need to be alert and attentive so that we don’t miss God’s presence and activity in our lives.

Let us acknowledge that waiting for the imminent return of Jesus is difficult for us to fathom. But opportunities to wait for Jesus’ presence are all around us. Every time we work for justice, we testify to the presence of Jesus. Every time we bear one another’s burdens, we testify to the presence of Jesus. Every time we advocate for the poor, befriend the friendless or work to make this world God loves a better place, we witness the risen Christ’s presence.

And so we pass on our faith to our children. We rely upon each other as a community and upon the best of our traditions to sustain us when doubt and frustration overwhelm us.  We forgive one another’s sins, study God’s Word, baptize people into a new identity, share meals, and enjoy God’s grace. We strive to be alert to the moments of Christ’s presence in our lives.

According to Matthew’s words, stay vigilant, stay watchful. Waiting doesn’t imply acknowledging the absence of God; instead, it means acknowledging our complete reliance on God’s presence. Instead of staying awake for the future, shift our focus to how God is involved in our current attempts to stay awake and persevere, providing what we need.